Joe apologized profusely. That was a big help. I called a halt to the fiasco. Then, holding my breath, I began tip-toeing through the data that was left, trying to salvage as much as possible. Fortunately, the boss's workstation was intact, and I was able to use his hard drive to reclaim many of our current financial figures. Where possible, I restored people's personal sales information from printed records. Then I signed up the contractor we should have hired in the first place to complete the upgrade.

It was six months before I was confident that we had recovered as well as possible from the data meltdown. But what never recovered was my relationship with our staffers. Every time I had to tell somebody, "I'm sorry, your data is gone," my reputation sank a little lower. And I didn't think it would be smart to point my finger at the guy who signed my check.

His money, his call. And my headache. Well, it's not too late to go into sales.